Sunday, July 8, 2012

An evening at a culture house



One summer weekend we were at Lamakaan a culture house which was the venue for Sutradhar’s refund- an Hinglish play.The  promo and gist of the play in 'the hindu 'was inviting.


The story originally from a Hungarian play by Fritz Karinthy  was adapted and directed by Narayan S for Vinay Varma’s  theatre group Sutradhar.


The story is about Aadarsh Vidyarthi who has been a failure in his job. He has been chucked out from whatever company  he has been employed at and so is short of money.  He gets frustrated and so blames the school education for his failure.  Encouraged by his friend he decides to get a refund of his fees from his school.  HE approaches his school principal MR. Khurana with a strange request of ‘Refund’ of his school fees  since he learnt nothing from his school.  The principal is zapped but seeing his adamant nature, calls his teaching staff to bail him out of the situation.  The teachers Mr. Pillai(Maths). Mrs Roy(history), Mr. Jha(physics) , an UPite teacher  called Ujda chaman all with their ethnic malayali, Bengali, Bihari and UPaccents  decide to reexamine him. If he fails in their examination, they decide to refund his fees, but amongst the staff they decide not to fail him even if he gets his answer wrong.


Aadarsh Vidyarthi  is reexamined by the school staff with their distinct dialects and this forms the base for the humour in the play. The staff decide to mark him right for every wrong answer and finally the climax is when the maths master decides to ask him two questions. One big and one small.


The small question is answered  and Mr. Pillai exclaims that Vidyarthi is right.  Just as we in the audience think that Mr. Pillai has goofed up and all the teachers throw a mixed angry askance glances at him. Mr. Pillai  tells Aadarsh to calclulate the refund amount.  Aadarsh Vidyarthi  calculates the amount mentally to the last decimal and claims the amount.


Then Mr. Pillai says that this is the big question that he had set for him and so the answer is right. So there is the bait.....Vidyarthi gets no refund.


The play was well enacted by sutradhar actors all of who are professionals like Medico legal advisor,  CA’s, MNC employees, engineers and retired colonels. Their passion for acting has brought them together where they have been practicing in the early hours despite their busy work schedules. The only hitch in the whole play was the volley of abuses thrown by the student in the name of humour at the teaching staff. Not in good taste.

 What forms the crux of the  humour satire  is  does education in school and college help you at your work place?


How many of you apply your school and college education at work? Not all are failures but still how many relate their work to their education.

12 comments:

  1. well I do completely different then what i studied .. :) i did bsc and i worked in computers ..

    seemed liked a good show ..

    Bikram's

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    1. yes, many of us do things different. yes, a good show :)

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  2. Mmm. Interesting play. Must see if it comes to my town

    Actually, most of us do indeed use our education in our work life, although we may not readily see it. The obvious use is language - none of us would have learnt English otherwise. The second is Maths - there is no discipline on earth you can master today without Maths. As far as college education is concerned, we would use it every day if we stuck to the profession we studied for, as I did. But above all, school and college gave us the ability to think, the appetite for knowledge, the discipline of work and a realisation of the consequences of laziness. That , to my mind, is priceless.

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    1. yeah, it was entertaining too...

      AS for me, the answer for my question is mixed. Agreed with the language and so agree with the maths part. The rest....many of us have drifted from our area of specialization... sometimes out of choice, sometimes out of compulsion, for better challenges....and regarding the quest for knowledge and discipline of work...school or college according to me is a platform undoubtedly from where on we hone our skill sets.

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  3. gist ay supera irukkay :) interesting

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  4. Thank you Asha for writing about Refund. Hope to see for our next production at the NIFT.
    Regards,
    Rita (the physics teacher)

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  5. @ Rita - It feels nice to see your comment. Thanks. will mark 24/25 to be there:)

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  6. D.J.Desai (Khurana--the Principal)August 23, 2012 at 11:43 AM

    Asha-ji Thank you very much for your comments. I am glad you liked the play.

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  7. Nice to see your comment sir:). My pleasure to share.

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  8. Thank you Asha-ji for the review. Glad that you liked the play & it's nice to see such encouraging feedback.
    Best Regards,
    Narayan

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  9. @ Narayan - my pleasure sir :)

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